Elephone S8 Review: All Screen, At Quad HD Resolution

Clones in popular culture -- whether on the big screen, small screen, or comic books -- are almost always depicted as inferior to the original (unless you count Wolverine's clone in the film Logan, which actually, uh, killed the original). That has been mostly true in the Chinese smartphone realm too. But the Elephone S8 is threatening to flip the script. It's an unabashed clone of the Xiaomi Mi Mix, but it's got a better screen -- at least going by pixel count.

In fact, the Elephone S8's 2560 X 1440 (aka Quad HD) resolution tops not just the Xiaomi Mi Mix, but it's recently released sequel, the Mi Mix 2, and most other budget Chinese bezel-less phones on the market. This is a big deal, considering the Elephone S8, priced at $270, is almost certainly a budget phone of its own.

I'm not just hyping up the screen from numbers off a spec sheet -- in my two weeks of testing this device at home, on the street, under the sun, the 6-inch LCD panel consistently impressed.

The S8 packs quite a bit of power for a budget phone too. It's got a MediaTek Helio X25 chip, which is the flagship MediaTek chipset that's more powerful than the standard P series chips found in most cheap Chinese devices. On Geekbench, the S8 scored a very respectable 1743 on single core and 4202 in multi-core. These are numbers on par with 2016 big name flagship devices like the Samsung Galaxy S7.

The back of the device has a shiny back that's similar to HTC's line of phones this year, except the Elephone S8 is noticeably plastic, whereas HTC's devices are made of more premium feeling glass. The back also houses, surprisingly, only one camera (a real rarity for Chinese budget phones, which cram every trendy feature into devices for the sake of having it). Elephone's engineers say they want to focus on making one camera good instead of making two.

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The back of the S8 is shiny with a camera bump.

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The bump is quite noticeable from the side.

If that's the case, then one must wonder ... what happened? On paper, the Elephone S8's camera should be decent -- a 21-megapixel camera with Sony's IMX lens -- but the camera is one of the slowest focusing shooters I've tested this year, often taking up to a second and half before being able to focus its lens on the subject clearly. This has resulted in plenty of missed shots of cats, babies, cars, or other non-stationary objects. When the camera does focus, you can get some great photos, provided the lighting is good. But the snail-like focusing is a major problem.

Elephone's people tell me they will fix that in a software update. While it is true that software can play a major role in camera quality, when this update will come is a legit question.

When you do manage to achieve focus, the camera can take some good photos. This photo of the neighborhood cat turned out better than I expected.

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Taken with the Elephone S8

Night shots have a tendency to be soft and lacking in detail, but this is true of every budget smartphone.

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Taken with the Elephone S8.

The S8 has a tendency to overexpose light source, like in the above night photo and the below daytime shot, in which the sky is completely washed out.

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Notice the sky is overexposed.

If you don't have high standards with your photo taking, then this is a non-issue. But many may want to wait and see if that update does come, and how it performs.

The camera app is easy to use and comes with a fun set of filters though. In video recording, you can record up to 4K, but there is no OIS.

Much like the Xiaomi Mi Mix, the selfie camera is on the bottom bezel, which means selfie requires flipping the phone upside down.

Most people will be buying this phone for the bezel-less screen, and on that front the S8 doesn't disappoint. People who only follow smartphone news from mainstream outlets -- meaning people who wouldn't know much about anything other than iPhone or Samsung -- may be looking at the iPhone X and marveling at the edge-to-edge screen. Well, the Elephone S8 offers a very similar look for a quarter of the price.

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The screen is vibrant with great viewing angles.

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Mortal Kombat X on this screen looks quite good.

There is a chin at the below of the screen, but it's smaller than on other Chinese bezel-less phones like the Maze Alpha, and Elephone actually makes good use of the fingerprint reader/capacitive button. The Elephone S8 comes out of the box without Android's traditional three button set-up. Instead, you navigate through the UI by either tapping, double-tapping, or long-pressing the fingerprint reader to go back, home, or overview respectively. This is almost the exact same set-up as Meizu's mTouch system.

With this set-up, you will have full use of the screen real estate, which is something Xiaomi's Mi Mix or Samsung and LG's phones can't say -- you still need to bring up navigation buttons to get around.

Of course, without standard Android navigation buttons, you lose access to Android features such as quick switching between apps or split-screen mode (both of which require using the overview/square button). But worry not, because Elephone gives you an option to bring back the buttons if you choose. This type of customization is something major phonemakers like Samsung or Apple purposely omit from their devices, because they want you to do things their way. I hate that, to be honest. It's great to have options.

The 4,000 mAh battery packed inside is very efficient. During my testing period, the device never ran out of battery on me in one day.

The device does get a bit hot during heavy use, but for the most part handled everything I threw at it. Another good thing about the S8 is its software -- it's very clean, almost stock like, and is actually the latest version of Android right now.

Overall the Elephone S8 is a very good value proposition at $280. I must mention that the device does not support Micro SD card and has no headphone jack (it does come with a USB-C to 3.5mm jack dongle though), so these may be dealbreakers. It's a bit more expensive than the Maze Alpha, but you get a superior chipset and that Quad HD resolution that can only be found in a bezel-less form factor on the Essential Phone right now. There are simply no shortage of options for bezel-less phones if you're willing to look outside the typical Apple/Samsung duopoly.